Kansas parents worry schools are slipping amid budget battles

Lawmakers warned of school closures amid funding battle

Dinah Sykes, left, whose concerns about funding for Kansas public schools led her to run for State Senate, recently canvasses in Kansas City﻿.﻿﻿

Photo: CHRISTOPHER SMITH, STR

PRAIRIE VILLAGE, Kan. - Dinah Sykes, a parent of two boys in a suburb of Kansas City, started noticing changes to her children's public schools a few years ago. Class sizes were growing. The school library had stopped buying books.

So she used her position as the president of the parent-teacher association to start a new tradition: Instead of bringing cupcakes to class for their birthdays, students were asked to bring a book to donate to the school library.

Sykes is a Republican who once voted for the governor from her party, Sam Brownback. But now, she said, she is so concerned that public schools are endangered by the state's budget crisis that she is running for a seat in the state Senate, challenging the incumbent senator in the Republican primary in August.

"We're getting a bad reputation: that our state doesn't care about public education," Sykes said.

Four-day school week

The struggle over school funding in Kansas reached a new crisis point when the state Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Republican-dominated Legislature had not abided by its constitutional mandate to finance public schools equitably, especially poorer districts with less property wealth. The court, in an effort to force legislative action, reiterated a deadline that gave the state until June 30 to fix the problem or face a school shutdown.

Officials worry that the state's budget, which included cuts by Brownback to higher education and many state agencies, may not be able to absorb further cuts to find the level of additional funding the court is looking for - estimated at $40 million or more.

As in other states, the effect of reduced funding varies from one district to another. In poorer districts like Kansas City and Wichita, students are crammed into deteriorating buildings with bloated class sizes. One district in southeast Kansas, facing a budget shortfall, recently pared its school week to four days.

The issue has increased pressure on Brownback, who had already come under fire for Kansas' budget woes and cuts to state programs after enacting the largest tax cuts in state history in 2012 and 2013.

Brownback and his legislative allies say that the schools already have plenty of money and that districts could spend more prudently or dip deeper into their reserves.

Funding 'basically flat'

District officials say, however, that the funding has not kept pace with a rise in fixed costs. The Shawnee Mission School District, for instance, faces an increase of $1 million in a year for bus services. Other expenses, even for school supplies, have grown in many districts, frustrating officials who say they need more help from the state to cover costs.

Under Brownback, who took office in 2011, state aid per pupil dropped to $3,800 from $4,400, according to the Kansas branch of the National Education Association. That reduction has come even as enrollment and the cost of health insurance have increased for many districts, said Mark Tallman of the Kansas Association of School Boards.

"Since the Great Recession, when you adjust for inflation, total school funding in Kansas has been basically flat," he said.